In the New European, Michael White of the Guardian writes: The painful fact is that both administrations look unimpressive from the outside and have done much in near lockstep during the pandemic, including the latest Spanish quarantine. Strip out England’s less populated regions along with the Highlands and Borders and the Covid casualty rates in dense urban areas and care homes won’t be very different. As I rebut the same lie day-after-day, it feels like I’m batting back balls fired at me by a tennis machine but hey, you never know, I might correct the thinking of even just one more reader, if … Continue reading Nazi dentist’s astonishing fabrication to suggest Scotland’s covid-19 performance ‘not very different’

From BBC UK but of no interest to BBC England or BBC Scotland: Researchers from UCL and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used computer models to see how the virus might spread in the UK as pupils returned to the classroom and their parents were more able to go back to work or resume other activities. They found fault and suggested that: Current testing and contact tracing is inadequate to prevent a second wave of coronavirus after schools in the UK reopen. However, on more thorough reading, it becomes apparent that this warning is only explicitly for … Continue reading Researchers imply Scotland’s test and trace system IS good enough but BBC Scotland not interested

Needless to say the Herald and BBC Scotland found something to sadden the day of thousands of students and parents. Here are some of the facts that would have helped readers and viewers to make their own informed assessment: 1 Pass rates up: In 2020: the National 5 pass rate was 81.1% the Higher pass rate was 78.9% the Advanced Higher pass rate was 84.9% In 2019: the National 5 pass rate was 78.2% the Higher pass rate was 74.8% the Advanced Higher pass rate was 79.4% So pass rates up in all three exams painting a far more optimistic … Continue reading Pass rates up across the board but standards maintained and poverty gap narrowed

In the Scotsman today, Prof Tomkins back at Glasgow Uni, but hopefully not doing something like teaching where you need to be interested or research where you need to be honest, so probably management, has a great idea to help the Scottish Tories beat the SNP. Policies won’t be enough, he insists. Well thank Frank for that, eh? What policies have they got? Eh, there’s, em, oh yes: No to Indyref2 No to Indyref2 No to progressive taxation No to land reform No to taking away private schools charitable status No to banning fox hunting No to Indyref2 No to … Continue reading What, the Scottish Tories have policies but should give us all a doing with their presentation skills?

As with the spike in drug-related crime by ‘County Lines‘ gangs operating out of English cities, ‘terrorising rural and small town Scotland‘, so the spike in farm thefts is by English gangs is being concealed by BBC Scotland and the MSM. The above BBC Scotland report makes no reference to the origins of the gangs responsible for a 44% spike in the theft of farm machinery. Reporting Scotland are, of course, unable to suggest such a thing. That would be ‘anti-English’, racist even. Only a few in the regional media identified the drug gangs as English and it is only, … Continue reading English cross-border gangs cause spike in cost of rural crime but BBC Scotland dare not say the ‘E’ word

In ZDNet yesterday: Scotland is working on its own contact-tracing app, which is expected to be available to download in the Apple and Google app stores in the autumn. NHS England is yet to provide a specific timeline for the launch of its contact-tracing technology, after the organization had to scrap the original designs for the app due to technical difficulties.  Scottish health secretary Jeane Freeman said that the new tool will complement the existing manual contact-tracing program in place as part of NHS Scotland’s Test and Protect system. “It builds on existing person-to-person contact tracing which remains the most … Continue reading Scottish Unionists rage at latest Celtic Connections as Jeane Freeman leverages Irish software

For some time now, the opposition parties and much of the MSM have clung to the historical data and ignored more recent trends in a vain attempt to persuade the general public that Scotland’s apparent covid-19 success is mere spin. In June, even as infection levels and deaths plummeted here, the FT characterised Scotland’s success as PR and encouraged a swathe of commentators from the MP Ian Murray to Iain Macwhirter and Gordon Brewer to loudly claim the same: As recently as July 23rd, by which time recent trends had become starkly different, Sky’s Adam Boulton was still repeating: It’s … Continue reading Adam Boulton: After months of divergence Scotland ‘has done better’as even England’s TOTAL death rate pro rata reaches 67% higher

From Richard Horsman, The Tusker‘s North of England Correspondent As the Grampian contact tracers work on the coronavirus outbreak with a connection to a pub in Aberdeen there was a timely piece which touched on contact tracing in England on this morning’s Radio Five Breakfast ( BBC Sounds at 8.38am 3/08)     The topics being discussed were local lock-downs and the new 90-Minute test. As the UK government seems to have delegated current responsibility and presumably blame to council level, Public Health England now publishes a full list of weekly cases and Cases per 100 000 population, by town or … Continue reading Sheffield goes full Scottish on testing and tracing

Today’s Opinium Poll mapped by Flavible, above, suggests the SNP would take all-but-one of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats in the next General Election. While the Tories have a strong majority at the moment, trouble on the streets in poor and ethnic-minority areas after an attempt to impose more brutal local lock-downs could lead to the current regime thinking they should just get out and let Labour deal with the mess and deliberately lose a snap confidence-vote election. In that scenario like that, would the SNP have the guts to go in with a manifesto stating that a vote for them … Continue reading Scottish Tory voters to hang onto only Westminster seat

Submitted today at 14:28. Continue reading BBC Complaint over unethical and unreliable reporting of chronic pain sufferers